“You should be a doctor,” Spinneretta said, still brushing her hand over Cinnamon’s fur.
Kara giggled, but the sound was distorted due to her full mouth.
Spinneretta sighed, her muscles at last beginning to relax a little. “I want web. Why are you the only one who gets web?”
“Be’hursh, I’n tho khoo’sht.”
“Wha?”
Kara spat out a gob of resin. “Because I’m the coolest.”
Spinneretta didn’t respond, and just let the girl go about her work. They had always known Kara was different from her and Arthr. That difference went far deeper than her bright blue eyes and blond hair. Thinking back to the night of their return from Zigmhen, Spinneretta shivered as she recalled the innocence with which Kara had claimed knowledge of the Yellow King. On top of that, there was now the matter of her own awareness of the Hunting. Though she was so young, she had a precocious awareness of the Instinct and its implications in a way that made Spinneretta uncomfortable. What was with this spider-girl?
“Operation finished!”
Spinneretta opened her eyes and sat up, displacing Cinnamon. She lifted her bandaged right foot and turned it to get a better view of its wrapping. No blood had yet stained the pristine off-white silk, and it was already feeling a little better now that it was dressed.
“So, you wanna talk about what happened?” Kara asked, hopping up onto the bed beside her.
Spinneretta grew quiet. With her foot tended to, the carcass of the events in the living room grew heavier. Without a word, she grabbed Kara’s shoulders and hugged her tight. Kara must have been able to smell the stress, for she just hugged her back, their spider legs wrapping around one another with Cinnamon at their side.
In the next bed, Annika still lay quietly dozing. Or if the commotion had woken her, then she was kindly sparing Spinneretta the derision she knew she deserved.
Ralph’s head hurt like a motherfucker, so bad he could barely keep his eyes open. The sight of the ceiling had grown steadily less inviting as his temples had begun throbbing, and he couldn’t take it anymore. And so he got out of bed, rolling his head on his shoulders and feeling his vertebrae crack and pop. His eyes were already adjusted to the dark, which was handy; too often had he bashed his shins against the dresser on the way to the bathroom. The familiar hallway, however, posed no obstacle as his steps glided across the red and white carpeting. Second floor. How long had it been since he’d been on the second floor? The bathroom popped out at him, and in his distracted daze he almost walked right past it. He flicked the lights on and crept inside, aware that others were sleeping nearby. The last thing he wanted to do was disturb them.
After relieving himself, he washed his face in the sink. A look at his reflection reminded him it had been quite a while since he’d shaved. I can’t show up to work looking like this, he thought, one hand stroking the brambly mat of fur. He cracked open the medicine cabinet, searching for a razor. There was nothing. Nothing disposable, in any case. Though he did find a pack of plain razor blades, the carbon steel kind that gave box cutters their bite. He’d shaved with a straight razor before, so this shouldn’t be much different.
Careful not to cut himself, he pulled a blade out and examined it. He pinched it between two fingers and considered from which angle he ought to attack the jungle of a beard that had appeared overnight. He squinted, weighing the mathematical implications of right-first versus left-first. He held the blade in front of his eyes and was briefly mesmerized by the glinting of the dusty light off its silvery surface. And yet his own reflection looked to be solid black, a smoky smudge in the steel.
An odd hunger overtook his mind. He put his other hand out and his fingers began to tingle. The tingling concentrated in the tip of his middle finger, and so he decided that was his target. He slid the razor beneath the fingernail and into the quick. A burning twinge tried to drag his jaws together, but he would only permit a nervous, euphoric gasp. He pushed the blade deeper and deeper until he felt the nail crack and come loose from the cuticle. It took only a quick tug to pry the hanging nail from the tender flesh. Despite the searing pain, he found not a spec of blood. How very strange, he thought. But as he stared at the pink nail bed, his jaw fell open with a quivering shriek. The first of the spiders crawled out of the wound. It was a single form riding on eight wire-legs of impossible length. And then more began to crawl up from the bubbling tissue. The spiders paraded up his arm, screeching hellish hymns.
Ralph could only scream as the spiders covered him. He fell to the ground, swinging his arms and trying to brush the invaders off. He yelled as loud as he could, but it was no use. Within seconds, the spiders had made their way to his eyes, plunging him into a world of darkness and mocking laughter.
“I’m worried about Ralph,” May said the next morning at the breakfast table. “I think something might really be wrong with him.”
“What happened?” Spinneretta asked, head propped up on her elbows. After a sleepless night of brooding and hating, she was now having trouble staying awake.
“I found him standing in the bathroom in the middle of the night. He was just staring at the mirror, screaming.”
“I was wondering what that noise was,” Arthr said.
May’s tired eyes drooped. “I thought he was just in shock about that ultrasound. But it doesn’t seem like he’s getting any better. What if this is permanent?”
The thought of that ultrasound made Spinneretta shiver. That her siblings had been created and not simply born was a possibility that had long troubled her. But now, evidence was emerging to support that theory. The spider in the ultrasound formed part of a how. But she was still no closer to a why. Shouldn’t need a theory of everything to figure out something so damned simple, she thought. Her plate of half-eaten hash browns grew colder as the thought burrowed deeper. Even without a full picture, though, that ultrasound was horrifying. It was impossible to imagine what had gone through her dad’s mind upon seeing it.
She sighed and looked around at everyone else at the table. Arthr was eating. May was staring into her coffee. Kara had finished slurping up her liquefied meat and was now making Cinnamon dance like a marionette upon the counter. The Leng cat’s boisterous clacking indicated it enjoyed the attention. It seemed like the boredom and despair of their exile had crushed even her mother’s initial revulsion of the creature. Apathy was comfortable, Spinneretta supposed. But still, this was a freaking alien monster they were talking about.
And how’s it fair that Kara’s the only one who gets something fun to do? Spinneretta laid her forehead upon the table and closed her eyes.
“Knock-knock,” came a voice, one which made Spinneretta bite her lip and wish for death.
Arthr jumped a little. “Oh, m-morning, Annika.”
“Annie!” Kara exclaimed. “Where’ve you been? I wanted to show you a new trick that I taught Cinny. Come on, Cinny, show Annie how you dance!”
“That’s . . . uhh, that’s fine,” Annika said. “Let’s go, Arthr. It’s practice time.”
“Y-yeah, awesome!” His excitement was palpable, nauseating. It was like corn syrup dribbling over a roasted ham.
“Oh, oh, can me and Cinny come?”
Annika hesitated, then grumbled something under her breath. “I guess. But you’d better keep that damned thing under control.”
“I will!” Kara said with a giggle.
“Because if that thing—”
“Cinnamon. Her name is Cinnamon.”
A sigh. “If Cinnamon starts running toward town, I’m putting a bullet in its head. We clear?”
“She won’t run. She’s well behaved, aren’t you, Cinny?”
A staccato clatter answered, and soon the sounds of footsteps and clicking made their way out of the kitchen and toward the back door.
Spinneretta’s spider legs shifted, again constructing a chitin shield to block the detective out. Good. Get out of here. Don’t look at me. Don’t even think about me. And when the
footsteps had left her in peace, she found a weight lifting from her stomach. With an unsteady breath, her spider legs relaxed and slumped over the edge of the table.
She heard her mom let out a low breath. “Well,” May said. “I guess I should . . . I don’t know. Leave you to it. Gotta go check on your father, you know.”
“Mm. Right. Take care.”
“Will do,” her mom sang back. Never had it been clearer that her cheer was a front.
And then, Spinneretta was all alone. She peered into the television’s scan lines, which painted the newscasters in hideous flickers of RGB snow. There’d been virtually no update to the situation in Grantwood as far as she could tell. How long were they going to be stuck there? Her eyes fell shut again. Between the ever-present fear of NIDUS, Mark’s acceptance and then rejection, and the lack of anything of even remote interest to do, she was living the closest thing to hell she could imagine. Nerves shaking from the reminder of last night’s embarrassment, and her right leg’s throbbing now front and center of her mind, she tried desperately to think of something, anything to distract her.
And that was when she remembered that old computer in the study. That damned UNIX machine. The breath went stale in her lungs. Was there really no other option? The anger began to boil—anger at the situation, anger at Mark, anger at UNIX. This isn’t fair. This fucking sucks, every damn bit of it. But that anger was not idle; it was restless, wild, and desperate. And soon it coalesced into conviction. At that moment she decided: if she couldn’t have Mark, couldn’t go home, couldn’t even sleep without the threat of being killed by that spider-thing, then she was at the very least not going to let that damned computer cheat her out of the only thing remotely interesting to do. She wasn’t going to lose to it, wouldn’t let Kyle’s slight at it being too hard for her come to fruition. She was going to get it to work, even if it killed her.
No, she decided as she pushed herself up and limped to her feet, lower appendages grabbing the chair and table for support. No, she wasn’t just going to get it to work. She was going to learn its tricks. She was going to study it. She was going to break it. And then, that fucking machine would bow to her. If that was the only victory she could find in Marlin, then she’d take it.
Chapter 25
Sweating Bullets
Annika leaned against the eucalyptus tree, injured arm at her side and her good one massaging it. She watched as Arthr clumsily loaded a set of wadcutters into the Chiappa Rhino and stepped up to the marked point on their makeshift shooting range. Arthr drew a deep breath, steadying the Rhino. And then he began to fire. The gun cracked six times at a rapid clip. When his barrage ended, Annika looked past the scorched patches of color floating in her eyes and found that all six shots had managed to hit the target. Four of the bullet holes danced around the second ring, one scraped the bullseye, and the last had strayed a little further toward the edge.
Arthr beamed and ripped the earmuffs off. “Ha! How do ya like that?”
She hummed and tapped her foot against a loose stone. “You know, that’s actually pretty good.” Especially for a neophyte.
His face lit up further. “Y-yeah? Really?”
“I mean, you have to lower your expectations of good, but it’s workable. Don’t get a swelled head over it.”
All but giggling in excitement of her praise, he slid open the gun’s cylinder and struck the ejector bar with his palm—just as she’d taught him. The six hot jackets tumbled to the grass, joining the day’s other twenty-four. He puffed his chest out a little. “Not bad for just a week, eh?”
“Not as bad as a week ago.” And what did I just say about getting a swelled head? “Now move it, it’s Annika’s turn.” She crouched down and opened her shooting bag. The object wrapped in the blue towel took up the majority of the available space beside the bullet boxes. It was time to give it a try. She’d adjusted well enough to southpaw shooting that she was finally ready to test a long overdue question.
“Hey Annie,” came Kara’s voice from behind them. “Do you think maybe you could teach me to shoot, too?”
Annika snickered as she stood back up with the bundle tucked in the crook of her arm. “Maybe another time. Right now, it’s time for science.”
Kara pouted a little and turned her attention back to Cinnamon, who was dancing between her outstretched legs in the grass.
“Kara, put your jacket back on. You know the rules.”
“I’ll do it in a minute,” she whined back.
Annika was about to press the issue but decided against it. It wasn’t like anybody could see them all the way up on the hill, after all. And it was only until the shooting drill ended and they went back inside. Poor girl is probably dying from being trapped inside all day. Just let her enjoy it a bit. “Fine. But keep your earplugs in, Kara.”
“Uh-huh.”
Annika clicked her tongue. It surprised her how well the Leng kitten was behaving itself. It seemed content to just keep prancing around Kara. Even when the bullets had started flying, it had obediently stayed put and watched with lucid curiosity. Annika was almost disappointed; had the thing bolted at the sound of the first gunshots, she could have put it down and cited the risk of letting it escape. But the Leng cat had unwittingly proved itself slightly less dangerous than expected. And as Annika had no great desire to rob the girl of her pet without cause, she forced herself to relax a little and focus on more important matters.
Arthr gave an overly chivalrous bow as Annika strode past him toward the target tree. She ignored the gesture and snatched the earmuffs out of his hand without a word. She allowed the towel to unravel from the object under her arm. A dry, burned-plastic scent wafted into the air. A gleaming black plate, like a gigantic broken thumbnail, glistened in the morning light. It was the plate of chitin armor that Kara had ripped from the Vant’therax Gauge during their confrontation.
Using the ratchet strap she’d bundled with the object, she belted the piece of chitin over the paper bullseye and fastened it around the back of the tree. Threading the ratchet one-handed was a chore, but soon she tugged it tight and locked it in. She gave the arrangement a quick check, ensuring that the chitin was affixed properly with the strap, and then wandered back to their equipment.
She cracked open a fresh box of full metal jacket rounds, and began loading her Ruger. These should work better than hollow points . . . but how much better? Her palm struck the cylinder back into place. She thumbed the hammer back and maneuvered the earmuffs into place. She raised the gun in her left hand, looking down the barrel at the black chunk of chitin. A deep breath. She pulled the trigger and emptied all five shots, one after another.
Squinting downrange, she groaned through her teeth at the result. The chitin plate, while scuffed and lightly dented from the impacts, was intact. She pushed her earmuffs off and threw the cylinder open again. “Well, fuck. What god would let such a thing exist?”
“No good?” Arthr asked.
“Look for yourself. Do you see any holes in that thing?”
He shook his head.
The wind swept over the hilltop, healing the ringing in her ears. Annika put the heel of her boot over one of the ejected shells and pressed it into the dirt. “I guess we’re just going to need to hope that we never have to fight one of those things again.” Good luck with that one. Chance is too malicious to let us off so easy.
“But,” Arthr said, confused, “you killed one before, didn’t you? Who’s to say we can’t do it again if we have to?”
“The way you say that tells me you don’t get it.”
“Uh?”
She crossed her arms, cringing at the dull pain in her right forearm. “You don’t seem to understand just what they are. That plate right there. That chitin. It’s natural armor. No matter how much damage you do to their exposed flesh and limbs, that chitin just grows right back over it, making them tougher and tougher. Take out their brain like I did, and their cult master will just reanimate them like some kind of B-movie
witch doctor. And the icing on the cake: superhuman strength and pain immunity. Even Superman had kryptonite.”
“So . . . if they’re so unstoppable, what are we supposed to do?”
“As that Gauge bastard taught us, there’s only one way: destroy the vital organs the chitin protects, and the body will shut down. Those parasite spiders don’t seem to have an answer to that. Burst the lungs, they can’t breathe. Puncture the heart, and the blood will stop.” Annika glared death into the unscathed chunk of chitin on the tree. “But just one of those Vant’therax took us all to death’s door before Kara and I put it down. If we have to fight two on one just to stand a chance, those aren’t good odds. If I could just get my hands on some metal piercing rounds, we could give those a shot. Too bad they’re probably illegal in this puritanical safe-haven of a state you have here. And with our luck, they’d bounce right the fuck off anyway.”
Kara shifted where she sat among the weeds. “Do you think they’re going to find us?”
Annika pulled another handful of bullets from the box. “They haven’t yet. Obviously. But we can’t be too careful. Given the way things are progressing in Grantwood, I’d be surprised if we didn’t end up crossing paths with—”
“Ahh! A bunny!” Kara interrupted, gaze drawn to a spot twenty feet upwind of the tree. With a blinding smile, she pointed to a tuft of wild grass that concealed a shaking brown hare. “Look how cute he is!”
Annika gave the animal a glance and continued reloading her revolver. “That’s a bunny, alright.”
“Come on, Cinnamon,” Kara said. “I’m going to teach you how to hunt.” Kara’s spider legs unfolded beneath her, taking her into a crawl.
Annika slid the last of the bullets into her Ruger’s chamber, but before she could close it she found herself watching with morbid curiosity as the young girl stalked through the grass on her plated legs. Behind her, Cinnamon followed in lockstep, stumbling a little over the lumpy ground.
“Not too fast now,” Kara sang under her breath. “Just creep and crawl and creep.” Her whole body shivered with some unseen stimulus. She drew close. When the rabbit glanced up in her direction, the girl and the Leng cat both froze. For a few seconds, nothing moved. And then Kara pounced.
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